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And which outcome do you think is most likely to happen?
I know nothing of military, tactics and so on - but my impression is that the things are way more orderly on the Russian side than the Ukrainian in the last couple of months.
It's a fair question. Asking people to stake their position is reasonable, and it's been awhile since I have on Ukraine expectations.
Short version- none of the above. I believe the war is more likely to go on for political reasonings rather than end due to a military collapse. I think the more likely consequence of the next year is a continued general grind with advances but no decisive victory for Russia over the next year, with decisive being a front-wide collapse as opposed to the natural operational advancements following the fall of Pokrovsk or similar settlements. The dynamics that didn't lead to those decisive victories happening in previous years generally still apply. Russia has continued to de-motorize/de-mechanize which has negated their operational maneuver to exploit gaps or withdrawals. The drone military revolution continues to disrupt concentration of forces to a degree few appreciate for both offense and defense. Ukraine's key means of external supply were changed rather than cancelled by the Trump administration, and in a way that supports sustained support over time as long as key European capitals support it, which they are liable to.
I broadly concur with Michael Koffman that the war has transitioned from a war of attrition to a war of exhaustion. The war is no longer about depleting critical military capabilities (artillery ammo / air defense munitions / manpower) into such a shortage that it would lead to collapse via some critical overmatch (uncontested fires / close air support / fix-and-bypass maneuver), but is transitioning to a contest of long-term systemic support constrained by both internal and external factors. This is a contest where Russia still has various advantages, but not such a wideset spread at the ratios required as to crush/break as opposed to grind/push back the Ukrainian lines forever / until the front is pushed to the western border.
This doesn't mean attrition doesn't matter / collapses can't happen, as unlikely things still happen some times, but absent one it's liable to be a long-term grind, and the dynamics for that are closer than many people realize/accept. Ukraine's manpower is not as desperate or 'last bits of the bottom of the barrel' as the more popular anti-Ukrainian propaganda portrays, nor is Russia as awash in manpower as many believe, given its self-imposed limits on conscripts that have only grown clearer over time. Both states have relatively resilient but potentially vulnerable war-industry basis as this point, with Russia's better-known advantages being tempered by the steady depletion of its less-well-known transitory advantages, while the Ukrainian vulnerability to diplomatic cut-offs from not-guaranteed European support due to election turnovers mitigated by the fact that most European and American military-economic support to Ukraine remains beyond Russian ability/willingness to directly disrupt. There's enough vulnerability for either side to feel they could shift things in their favor / the other may collapse, which leads to the bargaining tension of mismatched expectations which complicates any peace prospects.
On the political front, the war remains in a political equilibrium. Putin maintains maximalist demands that the Ukrainian government cannot as much as will not agree to, but which are also beyond Putin's ability to compel by force of arms in the near or medium term. The war is ruinous for both Ukraine and Russia on national levels, but not politically dangerous to Putin on a personal level for the relevant time frame, which allows Putin's bad habits of sunk cost fallacy and strategic procrastination to manifest. No territorial gain or harm to Ukraine is self-evidently worth the material, economic, political, social, or strategic costs Russia is paying now and incurring for the long term, but Russian zero-sum-ism will frame any Ukrainian harm/defeat as a win and so cutting losses is for losers. There are and are likely to continue to be enough Russian visible wins (cities taken over time / favorable electoral cycles in Europe) that Putin is liable to variously feel he's in a position of relative strength that will get better over time if he waits / a position of relative weakness will get better over time if he waits, with no falsification metric outside Russian economic collapse (which is unlikely in the near or medium term). The wildcard of Trump's effect on Ukrainian support has largely played out, and with it the prospect of any near-term peace (particularly via Ukrainian concession), which I thought was possible but unlikely this year and believe is far less likely next year absent major changes beyond the current discussions of Pokrovsk or even all of Donbass falling. (Which- to be clear- I don't think will force a political end to the war.)
Again, fair question, and it could merit a far deeper response. But I've about two months left on my self-imposed sabbatical on Ukraine War effort posting, and this already pushed it. I may allow myself one end-of-year post to follow up some predictions from late last year (on the Ukraine front) and earlier this year (on the Trump-on-Ukraine front), but it could also be early next year.
Thank you for your awesome response. Just one question (if you decide to continue the sabatical, I will understand). Which will be the next Stalingrad in this war that already had 5 or 6 of those?
None, but that's because my view of what a Stalingrad is implies something distinct and I wouldn't view any of the fortress city battles to qualify.
The shorter version is that Russia's manpower limits are clear enough now that the Russian military isn't going to do the sort of Bakhmut storm/siege that they did in '22/'23 where Russia prioritized high-casualty urban operations to move the urban gains map forward. Instead, the model is more likely to be the Pokrovsk, where the strategy was to try and isolate the city by advancing around the edges, interdict the supply lines, and force the Ukrainians to withdraw or risk a closed pocket.
The advantage of the Pokrovsk approach is that it's a lot less casualty-intensive in the way that Bakhmut was. The downside of the Pokrovsk method is that it takes a long time as the ability to effectively push flanks to isolate a city, which means it's still a very bloody process it's just extended over a longer time, which is more sustainable in a force-generation perspective.
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